Domain name server for .eu domain released as open source

An Internet top-level domain name server (DNS) implementation, developed for Europe's .eu Top-Level Domain (TLD), is made available as open source by Eurid. The not-for-profit organisation which manages the .eu domain registry, developed the software, titled Yadifa, from scratch.

Eurid uses Yadifa alongside Bind, one of two other commonly used open source DNS systems - the third alternative being NSD.

A spokesperson for Eurid explains that the organisation specifically wanted a third open source system. "Both NSD and Bind have their strengths and flaws. We added Yadifa to strengthen our infrastructure." In a press release, the organisation says that Yadifa can handle more queries, loads DNS information faster and has a smaller memory footprint than BIND or NSD.

"It was simply the most practical to add our own", says Peter Janssen, chief technical officer at Eurid. "This is software for a very specific niche: TLD registries must be able to respond to hundreds of thousands of requests per second."

Eurid's external relations manager, Giovanni Seppia, says that making the software available as open source is the obvious thing to do. "The TLD-community is small and we share many of our tools in this way."

Introducing the EUPL
Yadifa is published using the BSD 3-clause licence (BSD new). Janssen: "We also considered the GPL, but we figured the BSD 3-clause licence fits our project better." This licence places no restrictions on commercial copies of the software, confirms Janssen. "But that is not our primary aim. We're really using this just for the .eu registry."

Eurid did not consider using the European Union's public licence, the EUPL. "I did not know it existed."

The '.eu' TLD was created in 2000 following a decision by the European Council, at their Lisbon meeting. The legal framework was created by the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers. The European Commission organised the procurement for the services needed for the registry.

The software was published officially today, at a meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) taking place in Prague, the Czech Republic.